Hi, I have two questions: 1. which external antenna is recommended for the pepwave BR1, (cable distance and antenna gain). 2. What advantages do I have using an antenna on Celular main and an antenna with similar characteristics on celular diversity?
Hi.
- Hopefully you purchased your BR1 from a knowledgeable and helpful seller and that organization is be able to competently advise you. And, any competent seller would have good resources vis-a-v-is antennas. If not, I’d follow these guidelines as a starting point:
- Use an omni anenna unless there is a compelling reason to use a directional one. If you must use a directional, look for a LPDA (log periodic dipole array) type.
- Try to keep your antenna lines as short as possible and use the largest cable (least loss) as you can tolerate. We use everything from LMR195 to LMR600 to .5" Commscope “hard line.” You can find tables on-line which show the losses associated with the various types, against frequency.
- Antenna gain is part of the engineering mix with which your seller should be helpful. Antenna gain will be the last of the variables to be considered.
- The second SMA connector on the BR1 is there for a reason. The BR1 will perform best with two antennas, one of which is for diversity. Generally, the 2nd antenna will mainly yield benefits vis-a-vis throughput and reliability. In a high signal strength/quality environment the 2nd antenna will be less necessary and the OEM-furnished antennas should be perfectly adequate. In the relatively few situations where we’ve installed a single antennas we use a 50 Ohm terminator on the unused SMA connector.
Rick
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read some of the recent post on external antennas, lots of good info in the past year here